Organic Container Gardening - No Garden? No Problem

If you want to try your hand at growing your own organic flowers and vegetables but have no garden, don't worry. Many people grow organic products successfully using a container. You can keep the container wherever is convenient or move it around if you need to.

A container describes any vessel which can hold soil. It might be natural, such as a clay or wooden container, or you can use an old wheelbarrow, plastic carton or bucket. As long as it is not going to fall to bits when watered, you can make use of it. It is important that your chosen container can drain because most plants dislike being over-watered. If the container does not have holes in it, you can make some with a drill or knitting needle, depending what the container is made out of. An inch or so of broken clay pots, gravel or pebbles in the bottom of the pot ensures good drainage, while a layer of leaf mold or ripped up paper on top of the clay or gravel can help to retain adequate moisture.

Living, organic soil is very important in organic container gardening. If you are using a garden, you can gradually add organic matter to the existing soil but if you plan to use a container, you need to begin with organic soil. You need organic soil, capable of holding water without drenching the plants' roots too much because there is no subsoil in the container. Adding peat moss to the organic soil is a good way to do that. You can grow organic products in peat moss by itself without adding soil if you prefer.

Depending on the size of your chosen container, you can grow whatever you like in it. As long as the pot is big enough, you can choose from herbs, tomatoes, eggplant, zucchini, lettuce and many other vegetables. Organic seeds and plants should be used for organic gardening to produce a true organic product, but as long as you don't plan to sell the product, it is up to you. It can be fun to experiment!

Pest control is much easier in organic container gardening than in regular gardening. You can see the whole plant and pick off bugs such as hookworms. You can bring it to a faucet to wash the leaves and stem when the plant is in a pot instead of in the garden. You probably won't see cutworms if you are using containers but you might find slugs. Simply sprinkle diatomaceous earth on the soil around your produce to get rid of them.

If aphids make a home on your plant, you can sort this problem out by buying a pack of ladybugs which will eat the aphids without destroying your produce.

Anyone can have a go at organic container gardening. It is easy and can be very satisfying to grow your own food. Organic food tastes so good too. If you can place your container in a sheltered area with natural light, it is possible to grow produce in it throughout the year.

Lee Dobbins writes for Backyard Garden and Patio where you can learn more about organic container gardening.

Growing Vegetables and Fruit by Organic Gardening

Organic gardening is the way of growing vegetables and fruits with the use of things only found in nature.

Why would one want to indulge in organic gardening?

1. One can easily make compost from garden and kitchen waste. Though this is a bit more time-consuming than buying prepared chemical pesticides and fertilizers, it certainly helps to put garbage to good use and so saves the environment.

2. Organic farming does not use chemicals that may have an adverse affect on your health. This is especially important when growing vegetables. Chemical companies tell us that the chemicals we use are safe if used according to direction, but research shows that even tiny amounts of poisons absorbed through the skin can cause such things as cancer, especially in children.

On the average, a child ingests four to five times more cancer-causing pesticides from foods than an adult. This can lead to various diseases later on in the child's life. With organic gardening, these incidents are lessened.

Remember, pesticides contain toxins that have only one purpose - to kill living things.

3. Less harm to the environment. Poisons are often washed into our waterways, causing death to the native fish and polluting their habitat.

4. Organic farming practices help prevent the loss of topsoil through erosion. The Soil Conservation Service says that an estimated 30 - 32 billion tons of soil erodes from United States farmlands every year.

5. Cost savings. One does not need to buy costly chemical fertilizers and pesticides with organic gardening. Many organic recipes for the control of pest and disease come straight from the kitchen cupboard. Sometimes other plants can be grown as companions to the main crop. An example of this is the marigold, which helps to repel aphids from vegetables.

Mixing 1 tablespoon of liquid dishwashing soap and 1 cup of cooking oil can make a cheap garden pest spray. Put 3 tablespoons of this mixture in 1 quart of water and spray on plants.

6.A simple mulch of pine needles will help to suppress the growth of weeds as well as keeping the moisture in.

7. Organic gardening practices help to keep the environment safe for future generations.

Bill McRea is the publisher of Garden Facts also Garden Decor and Landscape Trees Landscaping and Gardening with information and products.

Organic Gardening Beauty

Organic gardening and insect chewed up fruits, vegetables and flowers do not have to go together. It is easy to discover how to protect your garden from harmful insects, maintain fertile soil and healthy plants, without resorting to chemical insecticides and fertilizers by learning about a few, simple techniques.

The gardening resource guide "Gardening Made Easy" (available at our website) discusses many organic gardening techniques to protect your organic garden. Here are just some of the major techniques that it discusses.

Compost and Organic Fertilizers

To feed you plants and get your soil nourished you can use simple, natural products called organic fertilizers. You can make your own compost pile in your back yard by recycling your very own kitchen scraps, grass clippings, tree leaves, and garden cuttings.

Or, you may want to purchase compost from a local garden center.

Plants can be grown directly the your compost or you can use it for fertilizing. Even liquid fertilizer can be created from you compost. It is an easy as taking out the garbage.

A small space in the corner of a garden is all that you need, to gather your extra garden cutting, tree leaves and grass clippings.

Pest Control and Organic Insecticides

Bugs as a whole, have gotten a bad reputation. The truth is not all bugs are bad.

For example, ladybugs, butterflies and bees are known to many people as beneficial insects. Moreover, wasps, flies and beetles can shield your plants from destructive insects.

When you apply chemical insecticides, or even organic insecticides, you can kill destructive and helpful insects alike. These helpful bugs can be purchased at many nearby garden centers or online to place into your garden.

In the battle against destructive insects, plants can also be a great help. Mixing in certain plants with the other plants in your garden, or using them as a boundary can ward off thrips, tomato hornworm and white flies.

Even Peppermint will repel ants and encourage them to keep looking for another place to set up house.

--------- Tom Straub is a successful author, and webmaster of the Best Gardening Tips web site, where you can read more on Organic Gardening and more than a dozen other gardening topics.

Home Depot Gardening

The home depot gardening section offers a wide variety of gardening products that will meet the needs of any home gardening enthusiast. Home depot carries a wide inventory of gardening equipment such as mowers, clippers, cultivators and tillers.

There are also a wide range of home depot gardening supplies such as seeds, pest control products and fertilizers available. For the landscape gardening enthusiasts, there are many landscape gardening tools available as well such as water equipment, greenhouses and garden decorations.

Home depot gardening also provides home gardening tips to help you maximize the gardening products that you purchased at home depot.

For example, one home gardening tip recommended by home depot is not to plant on a warm, sunny day. Instead plant it on a dark, overcast day when it is expected to rain. The reason being a new plant needs plenty of showers when it is young.

You also will want to choose your new plants carefully. Choose only short and sturdy plants with only a few flowers. Look at the leaves of the plant to determine it’s condition. If it is discolored and wilted, then don’t buy it.

The flower bed is also equally important. Try to put at least one inch of compost or organic matter on the flower bed once a year. You should also loosen the soil to about 12 inches depth for annuals and about 18 inches depth for perennial plants. Try to use a ground rake to loosen and smoothen the soil.

There are also home depot gardening tips as well such as how to start a new lawn, more tips on planting trees etc. Why not drop by home depot the next time and explore.

Ricky Lim is the online editor of a home gardening site. Visit his website today for more info on national home gardening club as well as home remedies from the garden.

Why Organic Gardening?

Gardening has always taken a great part in human life, either as the need for body sustenance, or for spiritual uplifting. Growing plants makes the connection with nature stronger and is considered a mild therapy by many psychologists. Organic gardening in its specificity reinforces the strongest binds with Mother Nature, as it is a true to life way to grow vegetables and fruits, using only the materials provided by nature.

Nowadays many people prefer organic gardening as it has many advantages over other ways of producing plants.

First of all, organic gardening requires your personal involvement in the whole process. The plants need you to supply the soil with fruitful compost. The natural compost is made of kitchen and garden waste, with no chemical pesticides in it.

Chemicals are the second issue solved by organic gardening. When you grow the plants organic, you need not add any artificial substances in the soil. Pesticides are made of toxins that kill every living thing in the natural environment. They can be extremely harmful for the human body, as well. Organic gardening contains no risk for any living creature, and saves the life balance in the surroundings.

The above-mentioned reveals the third advantage of organic gardening: it is harmless for the environment. You can try it and preserve nature. In that way you get two great extras: eating healthy food without being a monster to the living habitat around you. Trees and plants have produced their harvest for millions of years without being propped up with chemical substances. By organic gardening we let nature do something for us, and feed us, as it had feeded our ancestors with delicious food, long before pesticides came into fashion.

By trying organic gardening, you help your children grow up healthy. Many research works show that a child ingests four to five times more cancer-causing pesticides from food than a full-grown adult. The necessity of healthy food for children is not a myth, but a scientifically proven truth.

The last thing that makes organic gardening utterly irresistible for the practical people, is that it is CHEAPER. Pesticides and artificial supplements DO cost a lot of money indeed. But this doesn’t mean that organic gardeners leave things go their own unpredictable way. A devoted gardener always comes up with smart ideas like making cheap compost of coffee grounds. If you want to get rid of aphids, a typical organic gardening tip would be to plant marigolds nearby. There are many do-it-yourself practical advice for making your plants grow stronger. Take mulch, for example. Mulch is done by mixing pine needles and grass clippings. It helps keeping the soil moist and the weeds off. There are many recipes for producing cheap substances to fight against garden pests. The most inexpensive way to make a quart of garden pest spray is by mixing water with one spoon of dishwashing soap and one cup of cooking oil.

When taking up organic gardening, you start to feel that you are really doing something useful for the environment and for your health, and the satisfaction is rewarding. Saving money is the other great privilege that an organic gardening practitioner feels over the others.

Article by Robbie Darmona - an article author who writes on a wide variety of subjects. For more information click Organic Gardening

Indoor Greenhouse Or Hydro - Organics Grow Room

Have you heard about indoor hydro-organics? It is an organic growing technique based on hydroponics. According to this technique, you can create proper atmospheric conditions to grow the plants in an indoor situation while adhering to organic standards.

Hydroponics is the practice of growing a plant in anything but soil. Most might think that it would be impossible to have anything organic if not produced in soil, but this isn’t true. Hydroponics, or more specifically, hydro-organics can be fully organic and hydroponic by growing in certified organic coconut fiber with certified organic nutrients.

HydroHuts are perfect indoor grow rooms. Hydrohut allows you to grow with hydro-organic technology which is one of the most productive ways to grow all varieties of plants, and those raised in a hydroponic system will exhibit maximum yield, flavor, vitamin and essential oil content.

Grow your choice of vegetables and plants in a better way, in your own hydro-organic growing chamber. HydroHut is a leader in the indoor organic hydroponics market nationwide. These indoor grow rooms are a model of a greenhouse unit. So, it is also called an indoor greenhouse. Hydrohuts can be equipped with everything you need to grow bigger, better plants indoors; including high intensity discharge (HID) lighting systems, cooling fans, a hydro-organic gardening system, and atmospheric controllers.

Many sizes of HydroHuts are available for your specific situation, including the Kindergarden, HydroHut Mini, HydroHut Original, HydroHut 2x4 garden and the big daddy, the Deluxe HydroHut. You can choose from any of these which suits your specific gardening area and space requirements.

Hydroponics and Hydro-organics has never been so easy as with the HydroHut.

HydroHuts make perfect indoor grow rooms for growing a wide variety of plants. Want to know how you can have a garden in full bloom right in your living room with Hydrohut? It is not magic it is hydro-ponics, a tested and proven technique of growing plants without soil. Want to know more? Go to Hydrohuts home.

Organic Options For Fertilising Your Vegetable Garden

I have often been asked what is the best organic fertiliser to add to the soil of a vegetable garden. Its not the sort of question that has an easy answer, but its not a complicated solution either. There is really no exact answer to a “best” product when it comes to organic nutrients.

Organic gardening is more about a system of gardening - Crop rotation, mulching, composting, vermicast, and companion planting all form a part of an Organic Gardening System.

The best place to start is to create 2 or 3 compost heaps in your backyard.

Whether you use a Compost Bin, Tumbler, Stack or Compost bays – the end result will still be the same - A nutrient rich soil conditioner and mulch ready to add to your vegetable garden. You should always ensure your compost heap receives sufficient heat in order to destroy seeds that may be present from lawn clippings and weeds.

Suitable ingredients for your compost heap includes – old hay or straw, vegetable scraps, shredded paper, lawn clippings & animal manure. Avoid things like Orange peel, onion skins and meat scraps.

If you live in a unit or have a small backyard, you might have vegetables growing in pots. An ideal way to make compost in these situations is with a small worm farm. The worms create enough compost (called vermicast) to feed your potted vegetables throughout the year. All your household scraps and waste paper can be added to the worm farm.

This is an ideal start for creating an Organic Garden System.

Eric J. Smith is an Organic Gardener and passionate Environmentalist. He is dedicated to promoting the need for an Organic, Natural World. Find out more on Organic Personal Care Products here